Last Hope (in Devastation)
by The DG Forum
Summary: They call it the Devastation.


This story was written for **Jessica (idreamofdraco)** in _**The DG Forum Fic Exchange - Winter 2016**_ by a member of our forum. For more details please visit our page.

* * *

They call it the Devastation. Ginny calls it FUBAR, something she picked up from a stint in Afghanistan a few years ago when she'd been hunting a terrorist witch with a gaggle of magically inclined US Army troops over the course of three weeks. She found she liked the colour of their commentary far more than she'd expected.

Her government calls it an accident.

But she knows differently.

Things fell apart after the Minister was assassinated. After the American Ministry went dark. After Belgium and Russia and a bevy of other countries in between announced the presence of the Wizarding World and locked their borders with wards and physical barriers.

The first Inferi might have been an accident. The thousands afterward were nothing more than terror. The muggles they infected were something worse.

It's a different kind of fear than the War had been. Her age, she knows, plays a great deal in recognizing that. But fifteen years old or thirty, she knows it's not the same.

There might have been a life for her in that desolate picture that Voldemort wanted to paint the world.

Here, now? With the Inferi spreading themselves out by infecting the human muggle population with their bites?

That's not a life for anyone.

They call her a specialist. It sounds better than Hit Wizard-which doesn't quite fit-and she's not quite a regular Auror either, so she likes it.

* * *

The International Inferi Task Force was created seventeen days after the first Inferi appeared, and two weeks after they started infecting the muggle population. Ginny had volunteered for it as soon as she heard, despite her mother's protests.

She hadn't hesitated.

* * *

She used to be second in command of her squad. There'd been six of them then, and they were brilliant.

They'd lasted over a year together, the six of them. Countless missions across Europe, a few into Asia, and one into Africa, and not one casualty on their end.

And then she'd stepped into the ITF office five days ago, and they were handed a file that changed that.

Ginny had known it would from the moment Hermione's mouth formed the words "top secret".

She just didn't expect it to change so much.

* * *

The series of portkey jumps to their destination was supposed to take six hours. The third one that had led them into Egypt had also led them into a trap. The place had been crawling with Inferi who seemed hell-bent on going after them and it was by far the absolute worst situation they'd been thrown into since any of them had volunteered for the task force.

Their commander hadn't made it. _Ginny_ had barely made it out of there.

They had to keep running after that. None of them ever even thought about scampering back home, about abandoning the mission.

Dying was a possibility, a probability now. It always had been, but Squad Zero had been lucky. They'd never been so close.

It finally felt like what everyone else must have felt.

They weren't invincible. (And Ginny never realized she felt like she was until she knew she wasn't.)

And they couldn't, just could not, stop doing everything they could to end it.

No matter what.

* * *

Ginny doesn't think the scariest part about the Devastation is the mindless horde of flesh eating muggles. They're terrifying, yes. Dangerous, that's a given.

No, the scariest part is the Inferi. It's not even the fact that they're reanimated husks of desiccated skin and bone, not even that they possess some vague sort of hive mind.

No, it's that someone is behind the scenes unearthing and ensorcelling the dead, orchestrating their attacks to kill and feed, telling them to spread and disease. It's that someone aimed them right where Ginny and her team were headed.

It's that someone sent the Inferi to kill _them_ , a specific danger to whatever plot their enchanter intends.

* * *

It takes two days to get out of Egypt, and another two to make it anywhere near the compound they're supposed to retrieve the asset from. The hike through the jungle had been nearly as difficult as crossing the border in Egypt, and by the time they made it through, dawn had broken on day five.

A six hour journey had taken five days.

When they finally reached it, everything went to hell again.

And then, there were four.

* * *

Ginny's exhausted by the time they manage to get into the compound, but she knows that it's likely they still have a fight on their hands. The military stationed outside the compound had been, for the most part, ravenous slobbering zombies.

She doesn't know when the compound fell, but she hopes beyond hope, that their objective is still possible, that the asset is still alive.

The geneticist her team is after, code named Birgir, truly might be their last hope.

Ginny had read over the mission reports, what felt like years before, when they set off on their suicide mission. Secure military scientific base in an African jungle, level of Devastation unknown. Birgir had reported thirty-nine other scientists on base, and at least twice as many military personnel.

Ginny's count of the infected muggles hadn't been anywhere close to that.

She tightens a hand on her wand, her free hand hovering over the butt of her gun.

" _Commander?_ " her second's voice crackles over her comm unit.

"Any further sign of infected?" She asks him, preparing to move further into the compound.

" _None so far,_ " Blaise answers in reply.

She frowns.

"Constant vigilance," she says, switching over to the full unit comms with a click, "Ayame, Ingram-be ready to force entry on my command."

She can hear the sneer in Ayame's voice, but they both reply in the affirmative.

Blaise slips back into the room with her a beat later, nodding sharply towards the door.

"Maintain radio silence unless emergency," she says into her comms as she joins Blaise.

* * *

The base is surprisingly empty, given how many personnel Birgir had reported. It gives her a sick feeling, something dark and heady. It feels too easy, despite how difficult it had been to get as far as they had.

They take down only six zombies and one Inferi by the time they clear the ground floor, and not once are they inundated by them.

Blaise nods his head to the left once they get to the second sub-level, just as he had during the first and she agrees. She clears three rooms without him, finding two bodies that have no chance of reanimating, and hopes that means someone is still alive down here.

Hermione had told her right before she left to prepare that she would know who Birger was as soon as she reached him. That she would recognize him.

Ginny had wanted to ask so much more about the asset, but she hadn't. She had kept it to herself, just committed the details Hermione _did_ give her to memory.

So, she remembers Hermione's words, the whisper of, " _you'll know him when you see him, Gin."_

Because Ginny does, as soon as she walks into the fourth room. She _does_ know him, despite the years that had passed since she last saw him.

She stops a few feet into the room, somehow rooted to the ground.

He has the same platinum blond hair, the same striking grey eyes. He's older-of course he is, it's been like fifteen years since she last saw him in person.

He's dressed up, and somehow the sleek muggle clothing _fits_ him in a way that robes never had, despite the shock of blood down one long purple sleeve, and the slightly greyed hue of sweat and dirt.

And he's _alive_.

Ginny can't seem to stop herself from cataloging the ways he's changed, the way he's grown up since the last time she saw him.

He seems just as locked onto her as she to him, but then he's rushing towards her. It's not the good kind, the kind that would have made her stomach flutter and flop. It's the kind that reminds her of battle, and she thinks for a terrifying second that he's about to kill her.

And then Draco Malfoy hisses, "Weasley, _duck_."

She barely sees the bright red axe he's swinging her direction before she drops to the ground.

The axe makes a squelching, snapping sound as it slices into something behind her, above her. Blood and rotting flesh drops over and around her, and then the cracking of bone hitting something at a high velocity rings in her ears.

An unevenly severed head rolls to the ground near her feet, half its face missing and the skull caved in.

He slams the door shut behind her, and then crouches in front of where _she's_ still crouched.

Why _is_ she still crouched?

"Weasley," he says, snapping his fingers in front of her face, "Look at me."

She does. She _looks_ and it seems to break her out of _whatever the bloody hell just happened_ to her.

"I'm fine," she tells him, stressing it as she repeats herself, "I'm _fine_."

Because she is. It's been more than fifteen months of nearly constant fighting, and yeah, maybe that had been a close call but she's had a lot of those in the past few days.

"Granger send you?" He asks, standing up and offering her a hand. She takes it, and she can feel that his skin isn't as smooth and perfect as she remembers.

"My team, yes. Hasn't exactly been a picnic getting here," she tells him, and then she taps her radio.

"Asset located, sub-basement level two, B204," she says into her comms, and almost winces when it crackles static back at her.

"- _-mander, assistance... require-_ " Blaise's voice is hardly decipherable, but she gets the gist of it.

"Ingram, blast the doors now and prepare for immediate evac. Ayame, get to Blaise by any means necessary, the asset and I will be joining you shortly," Ginny says into the team comms, before turning back to Draco Malfoy and his bloody red axe, "how quickly can you be ready to go, Malfoy?"

"Fifteen seconds," he says, rushing over to stuff some equipment into a dark red pack that's not much smaller than her own, "and it's Draco, remember?"

She does remember, even though it'd been years since he gave her permission.

Almost twenty years now, wasn't it?

He's at her side with his pack and his axe a beat later, "Shall we?"

She smirks, and then they're running to rescue her second in command.

* * *

Blaise's radio and comm unit is scattered in pieces across the floor, but the wizard himself is still alive. He's heavily outnumbered when Ginny and Draco find him, but he takes a second to salute her when they barrel into the room.

There are twelve of them, and though Ginny can't say for certain if they're mostly Inferi or infected muggles, she knows it's incredibly dangerous either way. There had only been six zombies when they'd been ambushed in Egypt, but more than twice as many Inferi out with the sole purpose of killing them.

Ginny jumps into the fray without hesitation, a well timed Flipendo knocking a slew of them away from Blaise.

"Careful with the spells!" Draco says, and Ginny spares him half a glance to see the wizard behead one of them with a hard swing, "Too much magic can damage my equipment!"

Ginny nods at him without turning to face him again and deftly holsters her wand, pulling out her gun instead.

The three of them manage to take most of them down with relative ease, all things considered. Blaise looks a little worse for the wear, but he's alive.

"Where's the asset?" Blaise asks her, and she smirks at him without answering.

"That'd be me, of course," Draco answers with his own smirk as he smears a paste of some sort across the cut on Blaise's face.

"We've got to move. Ayame should have been here already," Ginny interrupts, and both wizards nod in agreement without arguing.

* * *

They're expecting the next attack, but it still somehow takes them by surprise. The horde that descends on them is primarily the remnants of the military personnel, all snapping teeth and body armor.

Ginny's head whips to the side when she hears Draco's muttered curse, and she sees why immediately. His axe was stuck halfway through the zombie's neck, and he was quickly being overwhelmed by more of them.

She doesn't think, just acts. It's dangerous and potentially damaging to Draco's equipment, but she thinks Draco's life is probably more important than his equipment, even if he needs it for whatever cure Hermione is positive he's created. Things can be rebuilt, people can't.

The fire spreads quickly, and Ginny continues to act on instinct, pulling Draco away from the burning bodies with a sharp tug on his arm. Her follow up of a slicing hex narrowly misses Blaise, but her second catches on quickly.

They manage to get free of the horde, at which point Ginny lights the entire lot of them on fire with a well placed spell.

They don't move slowly through the halls; instead they run, Draco taking point due to his knowledge of the base alone. They stop only once-just long enough for Ginny to take Ayame's tags from her corpse just inside the first sub-basement.

She hadn't made it far before being ambushed, certainly nowhere near close enough to save Blaise if Ginny and Draco hadn't. She might not have liked Ayame's attitude as of late, but the woman had been a fine Auror and a brave woman.

* * *

By the time they reach the outside, the night is settling in. There's a slew of bodies in the area around the blown doors, but Ingram is still alive, though his left arm is wrapped in bandages he must've applied himself.

They're not far out when Ginny hears the strange whop-whop of a helicopter, and meets Ingram's tired smile with one of her own.

* * *

"I called in a favor, Commander," Ingram says, "I hope you don't mind."

The helicopter won't be able to make the entire trip back to England, but Ginny doesn't mind. Instead, she leans back in her seat, and lets her fingers brush against Draco's in the seat next to her.

She knows they're still in for a hell of a journey back, but she remembers being a teenager on the cusp of war and the comfort of Draco's arms, and thinks, maybe, just maybe, there's still things to hope for.

* * *

 **Jessica's Prompt (3)**

 **Basic premise** : Inferi are attacking muggles and wizards alike. The Department of Magical Law Enforcement has created a special Inferi Task Force to fight the invasion and find out who has raised the dead, and, of course, Auror or Hit Wizard Ginny Weasley volunteers for the new squad. Draco somehow gets pulled into the skirmish as well, either as a citizen or an Auror/Hit Wizard himself.

 **Must haves** : Draco wielding an ax. Ginny saving Draco's life.

 **No-no's** : Non-con.

 **Rating range** : Any

 **Bonus points** : Zombie jokes/puns. References to zombie movies/books. If the story takes place around Halloween (or bonus bonus points if it takes place around a holiday OTHER THAN Halloween!). If Draco faints at the sight of gore.


End file.
